Frazz by Jef Mallett for September 21, 2017

  1. White tiger swimming
    cabalonrye  over 6 years ago

    Does it turn a corner?

     •  Reply
  2. Large tv test pattern  color
    Lyons Group, Inc.  over 6 years ago

    Does every ice cream truck plays that? “Turkey in The Straw”? The one in our neighborhood certainly does!

     •  Reply
  3. Missing large
    Phred Premium Member over 6 years ago

    Let’s see. 55 mph is about 81 feet per second. Guess about 400 feet for a city block. I can hear the truck about one block away. 400 divided by 81, about 5 seconds. More or less. Of course, I also have to state: “your mileage may vary”.

     •  Reply
  4. Picture
    JohnRidley1  over 6 years ago

    Trick question. The Doppler effect does not increase as the truck recedes, it’s constant given the speed. What makes it unrecognizable is distance not Doppler.

     •  Reply
  5. 00712 whiteheron
    whiteheron  over 6 years ago

    I don’t know about the Doppler effect, but it took about 60 years for the sound to fade to me. But then I am going deaf so,….

     •  Reply
  6. Gocomic avatar
    sandpiper  over 6 years ago

    Does the Doppler Effect matter if you missed your last chance at ice cream?

     •  Reply
  7. Zoso1
    Arianne  over 6 years ago

    Just trying to get everyone in a Good Humor?

    (Toasted almond, please.)

     •  Reply
  8. Andi   silhouette
    JudyAz  over 6 years ago

    Why is the ice cream truck doing 55 in a residential area? Or do they live on the freeway?

     •  Reply
  9. Picture
    Greg Tucker  over 6 years ago

    A few of you must have stayed at the Holiday Inn last night!

     •  Reply
  10. Plsa button
    Richard S Russell Premium Member over 6 years ago

    For many parents, the thing that takes the sting out of the last day of summer is that it’s the last day of summer.

     •  Reply
  11. Rugeirn
    rugeirn  over 6 years ago

    As I observe the Doppler effect, as the classic case of the receding train whistle, I noticed that the effect does change with distance. The pitch shift is large at first, decreasing in amount and rate of change as the train moves farther away. However, the effect on a melody will be negligible, because all pitches will shift by roughly the same amount. The ratios between pitches will not change enough to render the melody unrecognizable before the sound fades away in the distance.

     •  Reply
  12. Missing large
    Al Nala  over 6 years ago

    Blew me away! This was funny! Well, for me.

     •  Reply
  13. Missing large
    JoeMartinFan Premium Member over 6 years ago

    Clever, poignant, and not cynical. WIN!!!

     •  Reply
  14. Photo
    Hippogriff  over 6 years ago

    Doppler would change the key (lower the pitch), but have no other effect. Background noise has far more effect than anything. On a windless prairie, the tune would be recognizable at a mile, in traffic-filled city it will be lost in a couple of corners.

     •  Reply
  15. Taz by abovetheflames
    danketaz Premium Member over 6 years ago

    Much would depend on how fast you are going to catch up with it.

     •  Reply
  16. Photo
    GaryCooper  over 6 years ago

    Badly-written question. As anyone who has heard a musical truck go by should know, the Doppler effect might change the perceived pitch slightly, but it won’t make the tune unrecognizable. The tune is recognizable until the truck is far enough away that you can’t hear it.

     •  Reply
  17. Photo
    GaryCooper  over 6 years ago

    Jeff Mallett must live up north. Where I live, we have ice-cream trucks all year.

     •  Reply
  18. Picture 7 banjogordy crp 100
    Banjo Gordy Premium Member over 6 years ago

    Ice cream Trucks in my time had a string of bells. No recorded songs. Made kids salivate for popsicles & ice cream. Then beg a nickel or dime from parents.

     •  Reply
  19. A selfie2
    Brian G Premium Member over 6 years ago

    I love the fact that this strip not only makes me chuckle but ponder, learn and wonder too.

     •  Reply
  20. Tumblr mbbz3vrusj1qdlmheo1 250
    Night-Gaunt49[Bozo is Boffo]  over 6 years ago

    Frazz

    17 hrs ·

    Mae West said too much of a good thing can be wonderful, and Robert Heinlein (and Mick Jagger, and Seal, and Ayn Rand, and half the world, appropriately) said anything worth doing is worth overdoing. I love it. But then Sting wrote the song “Message in a Bottle” with the closing phrase “sending out an SOS” repeated over and over and over until you realize that there most certainly CAN be too much of a good thing, and that a perfectly good riff can most certainly be overdone, and GOOD GOD, WILL THIS FORMERLY GOOD NOW DREADFUL SONG NEVER END? To this day, I don’t know what their producer was thinking.

    It’s a nice way to look at the end of summer. A quarter-year of it is just fantastic. Shoot, a half-year of it, depending on your latitude. And maybe it’s good all year ‘round, if that’s your thing, but I don’t know if it could be my thing. Make no mistake, fall comes too soon for me every year, but it needs to come, or else I’d either summer myself into burnout or, worse, into complacency. And while summer might end too soon, better too soon than too late. I’d rather suffer through sleet than forget how to appreciate sunny and 70s.

    Although that’s where the musical analogy ends, because it seems more often than not, on the kind of radio stations or — deal with it, boomers — grocery store soundtracks that play “Message in a Bottle,” the next song is something by the band Journey, which is like summer ending and being followed not by a chill but by The Plague.

     •  Reply
  21. Dodge viper green 2
    rgcviper  over 6 years ago

    This one reminds me of a Q&A I found online a while back:

    If you have four pencils and seven apples, how many pancakes will fit on the roof?

    Purple, because aliens don’t wear hats.

     •  Reply
Sign in to comment

More From Frazz